NES controller gets a rumble pak

Add some feedback to an original NES controller by making it vibrate. This feature is often known as Rumble Pak, a controller add-on for the Nintendo 64 which vibrated as a game feature. This version adds a small DC motor (in the upper right) with a screw soldered off-center to the motor shaft.

[Andy Goetz] and his friend built this as a robot controller, taking advantage of the latch and clock pins. Normally, nothing happens while both pins are held high, a signal that they easily patched into using an AND gate. This is actually a neat find, as the addition of an internal microcontroller could add bi-directional communication when the latch is high and the clock is strobed.

I think the confusion is about what this is for – it appears this has little to do with NES games. This is a hack *only* for the controller. It will never “rumble” while playing a game. (correct me if I’m wrong.) It will only rumble when plugged into a DIY device which tells it to rumble. The hack was the fact that they got a rumbler to fit in the NES controller. To be honest, I don’t think there’s any game-related functionality to this yet. It’s totally hacker spirit though – dirty, haphazard, yet functional. Very cool.